I got the chicken and fresh coriander (cilantro) whilst out doing the usual weekend shopping. I didn’t have any ground fenugreek and couldn’t get any in my favourite spice supply shop. This was the first time in over 4 years when they didn’t have what I wanted but I could get some fenugreek seeds so I just ground some of those – who said I wasn’t adaptable?

Just like last weekend’s balti curry, this one was very easy to prepare. And, from the little that I know about balti curries, this one would be more like what I think that a balti should be with the recipe suggesting that I would get a sauce that was nice and thick.

Not only was the preparation easy, the cooking was pretty easy as well and nothing went wrong. And not only that, the cooking time was less than 30 minutes. Perfect.

The official curry tasters arrived on time (they don’t have a badge or uniform – don’t want them to get too conceited) and right on schedule I was serving up the Balti Chicken Madras curry on basmati rice.

And how was the balti curry? It was just great. The sauce was nice and thick (sounds like I’m getting obsessive about the sauce, doesn’t it?). The chicken was well cooked. There was a lot of onion in the balti which suited us because we are all big onion fans (or medium onion fans, LOL, don’t explain your jokes Ray). The balti curry had a lovely, clean, taste. About the only thing that I would have expected is that the heat level would be a bit higher because I associate a madras curry as being hot. As it was, the heat level was medium (adding another teaspoon of chilli powder would probably raise the heat level to what I would expect). And this popular balti curry received an average taste score of 8.5 out of 10.